Analysis
Diverse voices, unique insights on key issues shaping China’s engagement throughout the Global South.
analysis
Linda Thomas-Greenfield and Washington’s China-Africa Groupthink
This week’s confirmation hearing for Linda Thomas-Greenfield’s to become the next United States ambassador to the United Nations provided a glimpse of how Africa might be dragged into growing tensions between the U.S. and China. Thomas-Greenfield faced hostile questioning about a speech she gave in 2019, ...
Linda Thomas-Greenfield’s Testimony Reveals Gaping Holes in U.S. Understanding of Chinese Engagement in Africa
During her confirmation hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to become the next U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield was asked on several occasions to comment on how she perceives China's engagement in Africa. Remember that Thomas-Greenfield is ...
What did Xi Jinping Really Say at Davos?
It’s fascinating to read Xi Jinping’s address to the World Economic Forum and then to read the comments about the speech. What U.S. commentators focus on, and what they ignore, reveal much about the challenges posed by China’s rise to established powers like the United States. The ...
China’s COVID-19 Vaccine Tussles
If Xi Jinping thought back in May when he promised to make Chinese-made COVID-19 vaccines available to developing countries as a "public good" that it would be an easy soft power win, well, he may now be reconsidering that assumption. Sure, ...
The Full Picture: China, Africa, and the Global South
The last year has seen the China-Africa space undergoing massive changes. The impacts of COVID-19, the pandemic-induced debt crisis and rapid shifts in Chinese financing to Africa have shifted some of the core assumptions underlying what we think of as ‘China-Africa relations.’
Donald Trump’s Spectacular Failure in Africa
At the sunset of the Trump administration, it's worth reflecting on all that went wrong with its Africa policy and specifically the oft-stated effort to contain China's rise on the continent. There's really no other way to describe it other than to say that it was a ...
The Huawei Fuss and Implications For Africa’s Cyber Security
The last decade has seen unprecedented advances in technology, from machine learning used to forecast patient health outcomes to renewable energy and biofuels adopted across a range of advanced, emerging, and developing market economies. While there is much bluster about machine learning, robotics, and data science, 5G ...
How Will Biden Shake Up Africa Relations? Let’s Watch
Tomorrow, the whole world’s eyes will be on the inauguration of Joe Biden. Stepping into a moment of unprecedented domestic crisis, he will probably have relatively little bandwidth for Africa. Indications are that the Biden administration plans to steer away from the Trump era’s unilateralism. While ...
Death of the Chinese Debt Trap Narrative
Critics of China's lending practices in Africa and much of the developing world have gone suspiciously quiet over the past 6-7 months. A year or so ago, Kenyans were up in arms over erroneous reports that China was going to seize the Port of Mombasa. A few months ...
China’s Vaccine Push in Developing Countries Suffers Setback After Brazillian Tests Reveal Sinovac’s Shot Only 50% Effective
China's ambitious global drive to provide developing countries with affordable COVID-19 vaccines suffered a major setback on Tuesday following new test results from Brazil that revealed Sinovac's CoronaVac vaccine to be only 50% effective. The findings from the ...
Unpacking the Chinese Government’s New Development Vision
This weekend the Chinese government released a new white paper on development. It comes in unassuming guise – it’s basically a MS Word Doc with the workaday title of China’s International Development Cooperation in the New Era. But in its own way it’s eye-popping. If (like ...
Wang Yi Gets To Enjoy the Luxury of Staying on Message
Wang Yi is on the road again after his week-long visit to Africa wrapped up on Saturday in The Seychelles. The Chinese foreign minister flew back to Beijing from the tiny island state in the Indian Ocean, only to embark the next day on yet another week-long ...